March 27, 2012

Tough to be a white man

So why do so many of them whine about how tough it is to be a white man?

By Barry NolanWherever you look and by almost any metric, any statistic, it works out to be a pretty sweet deal to start out life as a white male. And if I ever become deranged and suddenly start to kill all of the people who annoy me on Facebook with a potato peeler, I have the comfort of knowing I will stand a lower chance of being executed for my crimes just because I am white. If you’ve seen Facebook these days, you know what a relief that can be.

So I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many white men like me can be found whining about how tough it is to be a white man. It’s a mystery to me how they came to feel so beset on every side by feminists, minorities, and “the system.” When in fact, the system is so stacked in our favor, it’s almost embarrassing. It’s like our mothers set up the world for us. For white men, life is almost like T-ball. We are almost guaranteed to get on base. But lately, some of us seem to be having issues with self-esteem.

So it’s especially strange to see white men like Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and various “Men’s Rights” groups complaining bitterly about the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which may come up for a vote this week. Grassley and the far right don’t want to see it pass in its current form because it extends some of its protections to LGBT victims, Native American victims, and some illegal immigrants. Because of what? Because it should be OK to brutalize them?

For the first time since the law was passed, it has become politicized. And in a move to make up for voting for the awful anti-women Blunt amendment, Senator Scott Brown says he’s for it.

The passage of the bill has also been muddied by—well—mud. Stuff crazy people make up and throw out there to make it seem like it’s somehow a radical or controversial idea to try to stop people from beating up women. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which, among other things, tracks hate groups, has now started paying attention to some “Men’s Rights” groups that seem to just flat-out hate women. One of the things these groups like to do is generate baloney statistics about how men are the “real victims” of domestic violence.Comment: For more on the subject, see Bias Against Trayvon Martin and Obama and Tim Wise on Trayvon Martin.